Hi,
I'm doing immunocytochemistry on sections of adult female flies looking
for targets of a secreted protein. My rudimentary knowledge of fly
histology does not allow me to identify the structure that is giving a
signal. On transverse sections of adult female thorax, I came across two
small symetrical signals on a tubular structure in the ventral side of the
thorax. This tubular structure seems to run longitudinally along the
length of the body near the ventral side, but the size of the tube and the
distribution of cell nuclei stained by DAPI is different in different
sections (sometimes dividing the tube into two or three chambers).
The image is at (http://www.tc.cornell.edu/~tsai/tmp/oliver.jpeg). The
left panel is DAPI staining low mag of thorax transverse section, ventral
is on top. Arrow points to two holes with no DAPI staining that is being
labelled by my antibody. The right panel is a higher mag of the tubular
structure, blue is DAPI staining and red is my antibody staining
(arrows). The other red spots are autofluorescence.
People have been telling me it could be enteric neurons, but we don't
have many fly people here and no one is sure. Any help is greatly
appreciated.
Oliver